What is Left of Love
by Nyx
Summary: This is a strong PG-13, folks. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote this. I don't know what it means. I think it's that I'm really screwed up in the head.


What is Left of Love

by Nyx

Note: I don't quite know what this story's about. I have no idea what I was thinking of when I wrote it.I think it qualifies for the strangest, most undefined thing I've ever written. It's about love, and about hatred; it's about pain, and about fear of it. Most of all, it's about changes, about the best laid plans of mice and men. It's about life. I hope you like it - actually, I just hope you understand it.

Disclaimer: J.K.R. is God - whoops, got carried away there. None of it's mine except the text itself.

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"Because anything can happen 

In a world so full of fear . . .

Yeah, if this love can happen here

Anything can"

-Jackson Browne , "Anything Can Happen"

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I hate my country - that is, the ineffective Minister of Magic, his head in the sand. And the bureaucrats, the media, blowing things out of proportion. They are the ones who brought us here now, but they cannot get us out: that task falls to the everyday people, those who didn't want to ever be a part of a war.

There comes a time when one has no choice. I was a pacifist, once. I honestly believed that Death Eaters could be talked to, could be shown the error of their ways. I was vindicated when some of them came to our side, but slowly, the walls have crumbled down: my idealism is gone, erased with the first gunshots that signalled the Muggles' involvement. They shouldn't have been brought into this; all that it did was create another faction, another special-interest group to be cajoled and catered to. Not to mention the ones who turned on us, forgetting that we saved them from death unawares and only allowing themselves to feel hatred of our kind.

Deserted ruins are everywhere, now. Perhaps there's some rhyme and reason to why this spot was chosen as a meeting place: a destroyed castle, specifically, the one that every child thinks of in fairy tales - the white-and-red one in Germany, the one built by crazy King Ludwig. I don't even know what it's called, but I managed to find my way here, mostly by hitching rides with the few Muggles that still had gas in their cars and a reason to go. Once I commandeered a motorcycle; the police have no idea who I am. After all, wizards are removed from the Muggle records when they reach school - that is, Muggle-born wizards are. Purebloods are just never documented, and it's probably better that way; I can just imagine the child protective services knocking on the door of one of the aristocratic families. _Sir, we have reason to believe that your child is a preschool dropout. Apparently he never showed up for class._

Ha! As if child protective services even exist anymore. It's not quite anarchy, but something just one step removed, a strange hybrid of chaos and order. We know the enemy, but we do not know the allies. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" does not work in this case.

There is a figure climbing over a boulder to my right. I turn, and see that it is you. How was this castle destroyed? It was certainly recent. Perhaps a bomb, a spell gone astray - but it doesn't matter, does it, not now that it's over with. There's some sharp metal at my feet that I hadn't noticed before; I gingerly pick it up and hurl it away, wondering if it came from some suit of armor, long forgotten. Or was it simply scrap?

"My girl, my beautiful girl," I say to you appreciatively as you join me, as you brush off a stable-looking block of stone and sit down on it. "I hate what you are, but I love what you have become."

"Stop your flattery," you reply, a chilling look on your face. "It won't help any one of those people - out there," and you gesture with a sweeping arm. 

"Perhaps they're still having Oktoberfest in Berlin - isn't it in Berlin?" Smiling ironically, I heave a stone in my hand to find the weight and throw it. It clatters against rubble, bouncing down a heap of what seems to be marble before rolling to a stop. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow - "

" - you're gonna kiss your ass goodbye. Shove it. I swear, I leave you alone for two months and you become all depressed like this. You can't even be properly depressed, you've got to say these stupid joky things that only make everyone else feel just as bad." Something's wrong, something making me a little uneasy. I can't put my finger on it. It's been a year, after all.

"Shut your trap, girl." I don't say it unkindly, because this is only a game we play. Every time we meet, dodging Muggles and the bloodshed around us, we must dance around each other to be certain the other has not changed. "Where have you been this year?"

"Around. Places. Switzerland, mostly, because it's safer there." You turn to me, your eyes blazing unfathomably: they're cool blue eyes, pale and icy, usually devoid of emotion. Now, though, they seethe with pain and loss, with a love borne of hatred. You have changed in a second, something set off by my question: are you in a tender state of mind? Or did something happen - the journey, the Alps? "Why did you bring me into this world? Fuck! Just ... you ... oh, God damn you!" As you stand, I recoil: this is not part of what happens. Five years. Five meetings. What has changed, but us?

If I've changed, what's wrong with it?

"Come here," you say roughly to me. "The least you can do." You're almost shouting, now, and I'm confused. The situation has spun out of my control; you're going a little crazy on me. But... and I know what was wrong.

"Where is she? What did you do with her?" My God, she should be here by now. The third variable in this equation, the essential, the one who prevents this very thing from happening every year. She keeps us sane. 

"No, no, the question is what you did to Mum," you say, your voice a little more cool, if not calm. You're still shouting, but you seem to know what you're saying. Calculating. You're a Slytherin through and through, I know that. "If you'd never made me, you'd still be with her today. If I hadn't been here - she fucking got in my way! She brought them down on us! I had to - I had to! And now I'm taking her place. So go on, I'll be her, fuck her - and then you can have your little hellspawn, and when I die, you can fuck them too!" You've got everything wrong - what did she tell you, what did she say? Or is this your delusions, something come from a young mind that has been ruined by too many atrocities? Oh, my dearest, my dearest... 

Shame burns inside of me. You're magnificent. We could be perfect, you and I: together, we could end this endless war, the war that has lasted through your entire life. I could take you, here - tame your fury, and turn it against the world, if only you weren't... well, if you're not entirely my child, if you're not entirely human, I still can't. Life does not work this way, and I suddenly hate you from the depths of my soul for making me feel as I do. You are thirteen years old and I am thirty-three. You are the closest thing I will ever have to a daughter, but your breast rises and falls as though you are as old as I - and in a way, you are. You have seen more hatred, more horror, than I have ever imagined. "You have it wrong," I say, trying to keep my voice from wavering. "It was never like that. Ever. Never."

"Yes, it was. Mum wouldn't lie to me, now would she? I never wanted to be born. It was your fault, yours and hers, and you've got to deal with what's left." You are the perfect soldier: proud, strong, without remorse, totally dedicated to what you believe is right. "It's your fault, Daddy. Yours." If only you knew I wasn't really your father - but you don't, and you can only feel pain and hatred. "You can pretend I'm Mum. You know you can." You move towards me, and I don't have a choice.

I stand up, the ruins of the castle around me. You were insane in your last moments, muttering words that you felt all too deeply: you never knew the truth. The ruins are the ruins of my life, my world. You killed the closest thing you have to a mother, and I killed you with two words and a wand. The place stinks of Darkness now, but I still stand. The sun is hot on my face, and you lay by my feet, a broken body without its broken soul.

We created you, your mother and I, in a partnership borne of hatred, not love. We hated the darkness in this world, and hoped to make something that could destroy it. You came from a spell, not any woman's womb, and you were the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me. What happened to you in this last year, to drive you so far astray? My beautiful iron flower, strong and pretty, decorative but never to be destroyed. Yet you are destroyed. I hate you and I love you. When I met you today, I said that I hated what you were but loved what you had become; now it is the opposite. I hate what you became. I love what you were, love the little child that I once held in my arms and cooed to, hoping to never have to use your rare powers - now I never will have to. I can only imagine what you must have seen, what you must have done, to change you so.

And I can only wonder if it was my fault.

-----finis  



End file.
